Always happy to pull an oar for the State Fair of Texas, I have served over the years as a volunteer contest judge for a variety of cuisines.

I have sampled cakes and cobblers, pickles and pies and have even been invited to judge professional and highly competitive entries for the prestigious Big Tex Choice Awards.

But I had to wait for somebody to die before I could judge Spam.

By tradition, judges from the previous year have first dibs on judging slots for each annual cooking contest.

Unlike almost any other competition, there is virtually zero year-to-year turnover on the select eight-member tasting panel for the fair’s Great American Spam Championship.

Years ago, when I half-jokingly mentioned to officials of the fair’s Creative Arts competitions that I wanted to try judging the Spam contest, they behaved as if I had casually suggested that I might like a seat on the Supreme Court. I was advised to recalibrate my goals.

“There’s never a vacancy for Spam,” they told me flatly. “We’ve had the same Spam judges for years. They’ll fly in from out of town, if they have to.”

It seemed I was more likely to tee off at the Preston Trail Golf Club than to enter the select and mysterious fraternity of Spam judges. Ruefully, I scrubbed this item from my bucket list.

Early this year, though, one of the judges, a professional chef and culinary consultant, passed away.

And one hot July day, I received a letter of invitation. It was as if a silent specter in a hooded cloak had tapped my shoulder at darkest midnight. I was in.

I will confess to you right now that I was not as prepared as I might have been to meet this grave obligation. Before last week’s contest, my Spam consumption was pretty limited.

One incident was many years ago, when, as a joke, Mike and I cooked up a recipe from White Trash Cooking, the seminal volume on American backwoods cuisine by the late anthropological gourmand Ernest Matthew Mickler.

The recipe, titled “Good Ol’ Meat,” involved Spam dipped in an egg-and-breadcrumb batter, then fried in crispy slabs. It was OK, but awfully salty.

I gave Spam another shot this summer, while vacationing in Las Vegas.

A word is in order here about the interwoven trinity of Las Vegas, Hawaii and Spam.

Hawaiians rank among the most devoted and enthusiastic consumers of Spam on the planet. They’re just crazy about the stuff.

It’s not clear how the Spam-Hawaii link evolved, but most historians believe the local population acquired first a tolerance, then a taste for the stuff during World War II, when it was shipped from the mainland by government suppliers in enormous quantities.

Over the years, the state’s ethnic Japanese, Chinese, Filipino and other Asian-Pacific communities have developed a hybrid local home-cooking cuisine with lots of noodles, rice, teriyaki, fish, pork, macaroni — and Spam.

Hawaiians also like Las Vegas. The desert city sometimes goes by “The Ninth Island” as an inside reference to its popularity with Hawaiian visitors and its growing population of Hawaii natives.

My husband, who grew up in Honolulu, gets the occasional jones for Hawaiian home cooking, which is readily available at off-the-Strip cafes catering to homesick Hawaiians.

Last trip, Mike persuaded me to try a ubiquitous Hawaiian treat, Spam musubi. This is a rectangular object made of Spam resting atop a slab of rice and wrapped neatly in a sheet of dried nori, or seaweed. I had a bite to be polite and gave him the rest.

Not much preparation, I know. Perhaps sensing my novice status, the State Fair people sensibly teamed me with two veteran judges, each with 20 years’ Spam judging experience.

“You’re looking for taste — but stay alert for that aftertaste,” one of them counseled. The goal, it seems, is to tease forth the robust, meaty essence of Spam goodness while suppressing its salt-and-preservative aftertaste — no easy feat.

This was not white-bread-and-Miracle Whip cuisine, but a bold series of ambitious culinary experiments: Spam paired with curries and marinades; Spam smothered, battered, layered in phyllo dough, wrapped in tamales; Spam minced into a savory stuffing topped with crabmeat and a poached egg.

As we tasted and evaluated dainty little bites of each novel offering, I could feel the eyes of the contestants fixed on us like lasers. I carefully suppressed the urge to react visibly to either the delicious or the not-so-tasty.

This was serious business, more so than even the cakes and cobblers I previously thought so intensively competitive. There was more than a ribbon at stake: First place carries a $150 cash prize, plus elevation to a national competition and a chance at a festive grand Spam prize vacation to — where else? — Hawaii.

Therein, I guess, lies the challenge. Lots of cooks can make a decent pie, but who among us can transform a slippery pink brick of pork luncheon meat into a culinary triumph?

After a dramatic caucus to break a three-way tie, the first-place ribbon went to an excellent Asian Spam-macadamia-pineapple salad served in fresh lettuce cups.

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